May 22, 2008

From “Babies by Design” to “San Diego Opera Talk” to “Health Matters,” the University of California Television delivers a wealth of highly informative programming to iTunes U. Explore the hundreds of audio and video podcasts you can enjoy on your Mac or PC or take with you on an iPod or iPhone.

The Netflix Player by Roku is the first product that lets you get Netflix movies and TV shows streamed directly to your TV screen. It also costs $100 and offers about 8 times the movie selection of Apple TV.

Best of all, if you’ve already got an unlimited Netflix plan, you can use the Player to stream as many movies as you like.

CNet has been using the Roku for a couple weeks, they found a lot to like:

Setup is simple, and–if you’ve got a solid broadband connection–picture quality is acceptable and streaming performance was almost entirely lag-free.

That said, the Netflix Player has a major trump card in terms of price: it retails for $100, and delivers unlimited streaming to any Netflix subscriber on the $8.95 plan or above. That’s a major departure from Apple TV, Vudu, Xbox Live Marketplace, and Amazon Unbox, all of which offer only pay-per-view options.

Netflix is working with multiple vendors to offer Players, so we could soon have companies competing to bring you the best, cheapest Netflix Player.

We like the Apple TV interface and the way it makes watching Internet video so easy. For users that are mainly interested in digital movies, though, the Roku offers an interesting alternative.

AppleInsider is reporting that Apple is testing location aware iPhones with few select enterprise customers.

People familiar with the release, reportedly labeled build 5A292g, say location-aware services such as "Maps" and "Camera" now ask the user's permission before transmitting data used to identify their current geographical location.

The addition as it applies to the Camera application is interesting in that it suggests Apple is actively working on adding support for geo-tagging photographs, those people say.